The land is burning; Percy, stands on high; [Exeunt Prince, POINS, and BARDOLPH. Fal. Rare words! brave world!--Hostess, my breakfast; come: O, I could wish, this tavern were my drum. [Exit. ACT IV. SCENE I. The rebel Camp near Shrewsbury. In this fine age, were not thought flattery, The tongues of soothers; but a braver place No man so potent breathes upon the ground, Hot. Do so, and 'tis well: Enter a Messenger, with Letters. What letters hast thou there ?-I can but thank you. Mess. These letters come from your father,Hot. Letters from him! why comes he not himself? Mess. He cannot come, my lord; he's grievous sick. Hot. 'Zounds! how has he the leisure to be sick, In such a justling time? Who leads his power? Under whose government come they along? Mess. His letters bear his mind, not I, my lord. And at the time of my departure thence, Wor. I would, the state of time had first been whole, Ere he by sickness had been visited; His health was never better worth than now. Hot. Sick now! droop now! this sickness doth infect The very life-blood of our enterprise ; Doug. 'Faith, and so we should; Where now remains a sweet reversion; A comfort of retirement lives in this. Hot. A rendezvous, a home to fly unto, If that the devil and mischance look big Upon the maidenhead of our affairs. [here. Wor. But yet, I would your father had been Of our proceedings, kept the earl from hence; And breed a kind of question in our cause: You strain too far. Hot. I, rather, of his absence make this use ;It lends a lustre, and more great opinion, A larger dare to our great enterprise, Than if the earl were here: for men must think, If we, without his help, can make a head, To push against the kingdom; with his help, We shall o'erturn it topsy-turvy down.Yet all goes well, yet all our joints are whole. Doug. As heart can think: there is not such a word Spoke of in Scotland, as this term of fear. Enter SIR RICHARD VERNON. Hot. My cousin Vernon! welcome, by my soul. Ver. 'Pray God, my news be worth a welcome, lord. The earl of Westmoreland, seven thousand strong, Is marching hitherwards; with him, Prince John. Hot. No harm: What more? Ver. And further, I have learn'd, The king himself in person is set forth. Or hitherwards intended speedily, With strong and mighty preparation. Hot. He shall be welcome too. Where is his son, The nimble-footed mad-cap prince of Wales, And his comrades, that daff'd the world aside, And bid it pass? Ver. All furnish'd, all in arms, All plum'd: like estridges that with the wind Bated, like eagles having lately bath'd; Glittering in golden coats, like images; As full of spirit as the month of May, And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer; Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls. I saw young Harry, with his beaver on, And witch the world with noble horsemanship. Hot. No more, no more; worse than the sun in March, This praise doth nourish agues. Let them come; And yet not ours:-Come, let me take my horse, Ver. There is more news: I learn'd in Worcester, as I rode along, He cannot draw his power this fourteen days. Doug. That's the worst tidings that I hear of yet. Wor. Ay, by my faith, that bears a frosty sound. Hot. What may the king's whole battle reach Ver. To thirty thousand. Hot. [unto? Forty let it be; My father and Glendower being both away, The powers of us may serve so great a day. Come, let us make a muster speedily: Doomsday is near; die all, die merrily. Doug. Talk not of dying; I am out of fear Of death, or death's hand, for this one half year. [Exeunt. SCENE II. A Publick Road near Coventry. Enter FALSTAFF and BARDOLPH. Fal. Bardolph, get thee before to Coventry: fill me a bottle of sack; our soldiers shall march through; we'll to Sutton-Colfield to-night. Bard. Will you give me money, captain? Fal. Lay out, lay out. Bard. This bottle makes an angel. Fal. An if it do, take it for thy labour; and if it make twenty, take them all, I'll answer the coinage. Bid my lieutenant Peto meet me at the town's end. Bard. I will, captain: farewell. [Exit. Fal. If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a souced gurnet. I have misused the king's press damnably. I have got, in exchange of a hundred and fifty soldiers, three hundred and odd pounds. I press me none but good householders, yeomen's sons: inquire me out contracted bachelors, such as had been asked twice on the bans; such a commodity of warm slaves, as bad as lief hear the devil as a drum; such as fear the report of a caliver, worse than a struck fowl, or a hurt wild-duck. I pressed me none but such toasts and butter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger than pins' heads, and they have bought out their services; and now my whole charge consists of ancients, corporals, lieutenants, gentlemen of companies, slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth, where the glutton's dogs licked his sores and such as, indeed, were never soldiers; but discarded unjust serving-men, younger sons to younger brothers, revolted tapsters, and ostlers trade-fallen: the cankers of a calm world, and a long peace; ten times more dishonourable ragged than an old faced ancient: and such have I, to fill up the rooms of them that have bought out their services, that you would think, that I had a hundred and fifty tatter'd prodigals, lately come from swine keeping, from eating draff and husks. A mad fellow met me on the way, and told me, I had unloaded all the gibbets, and pressed the dead bodies. No eye hath seen such scare-crows. I'll not march through Coventry with them, that's flat:-Nay, and the villains march wide betwixt the legs, as if they had gives on; for indeed, I had the most of them out of prison. There's but a shirt and a half in all my company: and the half-shirt is two. napkins, tacked together, and thrown over the shoulders like a herald's coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say the truth, stolen from my VOL. IV. |